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Italian Sauce

A mushroom and shallot sauce based on Espagnole, finished with wine and stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,476 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Italian Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the flavoring

  1. Place the shallots in a small piece of muslin and squeeze them in cold water to extract some flavor.

Make the sauce

  1. Heat the oil in a stewpan.

  2. Add the shallots.

  3. Cook for a few minutes without browning.

  4. Add the wine, mushrooms, thyme, bay leaf, and stock.

  5. Reduce the mixture well.

  6. Stir in the Espagnole sauce.

  7. Boil for 10 minutes.

  8. Remove the herbs.

  9. Skim off the oil.

  10. Serve.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Shallot + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,476 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Shallot + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,982 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Mushroom + thymetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Mushroom + winetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,632 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-propylphenol (allspice, anise).

  5. Thyme + winetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,349 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Espagnole sauce
Forms the base of the sauce, giving body and a rich, savory flavor.
Shallots
Add a mild onion-like aroma and flavor to the sauce base.
Mushrooms
Contribute earthy flavor and savory depth as they cook into the liquid.
Chablis wine
Adds acidity and aromatic depth, concentrated by reduction.

The step that matters

Reduce the mixture well. Reducing the wine, vegetables and stock concentrates their flavor and thickens the liquid before the Espagnole sauce is added. Under-reducing leaves the sauce thin and watery, while the flavor stays weak.

Swap the thyme

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sauce, shallot, mushroom, wine):

  1. Capersfits about as well
  2. Thymethe original
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Garlicfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, shallot, mushroom, wine. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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